Hey webcomics please stop doing so much stuff all at once. Seriously, I have whole days when I have to scrape the bottom of the news barrel, and all of this (plus Disney/Marvel) comes about at once? Sheesh.

• If you haven’t seen it yet, Ada Price of Publishers Weekly did a pretty good piece on webcomickers getting to print, speaking with the likes of Jerry Holkins, Meredith Gran, and Jon Rosenberg (all of whom have deals with varying incarnations of Random House). It’s much better researched and thought-out than most articles one has seen in the wider world about our little art form, and well worth your time (full disclosure: Ms Price interviewed me for background information).
• Almost missed it: new comics from William George, known once (and perhaps still) as The William G. Yes You Can! only has five updates so far, providing not a lot to go on, so I’m probably way off when I say it reminds me a bit of Erfworld with a bit of Girl Genius, and a soupçon of Dragon Ball sprinkled on top. Given how much Bang Barstal rocked, I’m more than willing to follow along and see how right or wrong I might be. Jump in now before all the cool kids do.
• Last week, I spoke about the text-heavy background material that’s running at Erfworld; the usefulness of that technique popped back into my head on Saturday as I read the third installment of Dave Kellett‘s Saturday-only (officially nameless) sci-fi second comic strip (please also enjoy installments 1 and 2). Do me a favor — read the strips, but only the strips, skip the blogposts.

  Nice, huh? What started out unconnected (and almost suicidally depressing) became linked up and much more light-hearted with that long, wordless whistle in the last panel. But now for the fun part — go back to installments 2 and 3, and read the blogposts that accompany them — the xenobiological information on the “Continuum of Makers” and the letter from Conrado to his grandson; none of that information is necessary to hook me on the story (heck, that one panel of alien critter steering the spaceship with gripping feet got me good), but man does it add color or what?

  Just from this extraneous material, I can see a mess of potential story hooks:

  1. Somebody outside the ruling family is figuring out how the pinch drive works
  2. Somebody outside the ruling family is figuring out that the ruling family doesn’t know how the pinch drive works
  3. The Makers show up, wanting the technology back
  4. The Makers show up, wanting “The Spirit” back
  5. Whoever stole “The Spirit” from the Makers shows up, wanting it and/or the drive, and/or whatever, back (or maybe for the first time)
  6. Conrado’s descendants prove not to be as capable as he (after all, in 58 years he took a broken piece of alien technology and reverse-engineered it, presumably turning it into first a commercial, then a governmental empire, uniting a starving and fractured humanity) and the Empire starts to feel the strain, with our without any/all of the above …
  7. … and wacky hijinks ensue. C’mon, this is Kellett — it’s gonna be funny.

  The other thing I really like about Nameless is that Kellett’s posited a future empire of humanity that’s Spanish-language dominant. Whether that’s because the imperial family is Spanish, or whether “mighty Indústriaglobo” was already the source of power elites doesn’t matter — it’s something I haven’t seen since H Beam Piper wrote about a future where the superpowers blew each other up, leaving the southern hemisphere less damaged and Spanish language/culture as the de facto primary. Piper also assumed a lot of cross-cultural integration, to the point there’s a guy on a hell-planet hunting oceanic monsters named Mohandas Ghandi Feinberg — and he’s a big, ruddy-faced, red-bearded guy.

  To conclude: read this story. It’s good. Also, go hunt down some Piper if you haven’t read his stuff before.

• On any other day, this would probably be the most prominent webcomics news around: David Morgan-Mar and friends have cooked up the equivalent of TiVo for webcomics with too-damn-many strips in the archive: Archive Binge lets you choose a strip, and a number of installments from the archive to be sent to your RSS reader each day until you’re caught up.

  If you skip ahead on your reading, you can tell AB and it’ll pick up delivery from the first unread strip. And best of all, they asked the creators if it was okay! No scraping of content here — if you’d like your comic included, I’m guessing that the email address at the bottom of the page, for a chap named dmm, who may be found at a domain called dangermouse, which is a dot–net, would be a good place to start. Just remember that The Comic Irregulars are doing this as a service (they’ve declared Archive Binge to be non-profit and that they will not accept paid advertising, which means they’re even footing the server costs), so be polite and patient if they take a little while to get back to you.

Hmmmm. VERY hmmmm.

• Disney targets the preteen girl demographic like no other media company. Will we see a major comics publisher finally going after that niche?
• Will Disney Adventures return in some fashion?
• Given the Disney/Henson relationship, will the Muppet-related projects at BOOM! Studios, Archaia Studio Press, and elsewhere be brought back “in-[h|m]ouse”?

Real posting on actual webcomics stuff later.

I guess that whole “seasons are backwards on the other side of the world” thing is really backwards this year. Let’s do this so I can trudge home in the cold and rain.

• If you don’t mind the cold and rain in New York, trudge your ass over to Rocketship in Brooklyn at 7:00 tonight, for the launch party for Raina & Dave‘s take on the X-Men. Everybody I know that’s read it has really enjoyed it (except, inexplicably, The AV Club, who are normally pretty congruent with my tastes, but for some reason gave it an unneccessarily vicious review). Also, there’s a really good bar next door to Rocketship, and they both a) know how to, and b) are willing to shake one of the best modern cocktails in the world: the Gin-Gin Mule; have one for me.
• Speaking of Brooklyn and webcomickers, the upcoming Brooklyn Book Festival is going to feature a smattering of Topatoco author/creators.
• Speaking of creators, did you vote for the Harvey Awards? You still have a few hours.
• I got nothing to link to that last item. Sorry. Via Tom Siddell’s Twitter: proof that Archaia Studio Press is getting its shit back together after that financial difficulty last year, in the form of a solicitation for Gunnerkrigg Court book two. Yay! With any luck, Siddell will actually be able to buy a copy himself this time.

Interviews o’ plenty out there today, with my crypto-Machiavellian master holding forth on that voodoo that he do over at CBR. Meanwhile, Vera Brosgol (she hasn’t committed webcomickry for a while but gets a lifetime pass for Return to Sender) is talking to the bloggers associated with Little Big Planet — see the awesome background art there? That’s Brosgol’s awesome new 80 sticker fun pak™ for the game. Now we just need those stickers in a tangible vinyl configuration, on account of I need to plaster strong-men and two-headed women on actual things in my life.

• Bit of a kerfuffle in the aether erupted last night, as a website called Laptop Logic released an article on mistakes by newbie Linux admins and included cartoons by Randall Munroe and Krishna Sadasivam to illustrate points made. Couple problems, though:
  1. Munroe does offer his work under a Creative Commons license, but
  2. Sadasivam’s site doesn’t use Creative Commons licensing, and
  3. The cartoons were not attributed or linked to their points of origin, and most grievously …
  4. The cartoons were watermarked with Laptop Logic’s own identity

  Whoops.

  Reached for comment this morning, Sadasivam had no joy trying to get somebody at Laptop Logic to respond to his enquiries, but shortly thereafter the XKCD cartoon was labelled with a link and attribution, and the PC Weenies cartoon was removed from the article (as of this writing, there’s a great big white space where it used to be). So that’s all right, I suppose, but there’s a lesson to be learned.

  Namely, yes — webcartoonists make their way in this crazy, mixed-up world by giving their stuff away, but that’s their prerogative; their choice of how they give stuff away is deserving of respect. Given that Laptop Logic seems to be pretty low-traffic (a casual inspection of their forums shows … seven comments total since Sunday), I doubt that Sadasivam would have objected much to his cartoon showing up there had there been even a cursory attempt to a) acknowledge its point of origin, and b) not brand it with somebody else’s identity (those same two would have satisfied Munroe’s CC terms as well).

  Just acknowledge (and when in doubt, ask), and your average webcomicker will likely be thrilled to let you run stuff if it means driving audience. Assume/take/pass off as your own work? That’s just weak sauce.

• Let’s finish on an up note: Ryan North will be speaking at a fancy conference for computing types on the topic of comics! For those of you not fully versed in geekery, the Association for Computing Machinery is sort of a big deal and holy crap you guys I just realized that I pass under their offices every day when I ride the train to work. It’s like I’m walking under greatness. Okay, so this is just a local chapter and not the full ACM, but still: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign? That’s where they build the killerest of killer computers.

Gotta hand it to Andrew Farago — in addition to curating the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco and being married to the Nexus of All Webcomics Realities (west coast division), he does his own webcomics, and has today wrapped up the first mega-arc of The Chronicles of William Bazillion today. Across seven chapters (some of which have nearly a hundred pages), multiple digressions, and side stories, Farago has brought us the adventures of the titular William Bazillion — plucky boy adventurer, leader of similar plucky boy adventurers, and total dick.

Seriously, he spent the past however long destroying alternate (good) versions of himself from parallel universes, teaming up with the clone of Richard Nixon (and a few hundred accessory Nixons, making a Nixon Family that makes the Marvel Family look lame by comparison), leaving a swath of destruction so he could overthrow Santa and obtain the naughty/nice database for his own nefarious purposes.

Bazillion does it because he knows that world is a game, and he’s the master of its rules and loopholes. By contrast, over in Erfworld, young Parson Gotti is trapped in a literal game world and is desperately trying to learn the rules and loopholes.

A hundred and fifty comics later, we’re on summer break, and getting occasional updates that are mostly text to tell us what happens in between the big important story arcs. It’s a really clever device, actually — creators Rob Balder and Jamie Noguchi could have gone straight to the next chapter in comics form, and caught us up on the “between” plot in a few pages of panels, but breaking out the prose allows the easily-exposited points some space to breathe.

In a way, it reminds me of what Terry Moore did repeatedly during the run of Strangers in Paradise: when presented with a lot of information that needed to be conveyed quickly, lest the plot drag (or a little information necessary to the plot and a lot of color that just made the story feel more fully inhabited), Moore would abandon the comics for up to four or even six pages of plain prose. No pictures — just dense, omniscient third-person prose that got a lot across in very few pages, without requiring whole issues of talking-head exposition. It’s such an effective thing (when done well) that I’m surprised that more creators haven’t done it. Kudos to Balder and Noguchi for trying something new, and I can’t wait to see how well it integrates when Erfworld goes back to regular comics.

I vaguely remembered that Butternut Squash is due back not too long from now, and that led me to spend entirely too much time draggin’ my ass through six years or so of strips. Okay, it was irregular updates, and prolly fewer than 200 strips total, but still. I am weak. Still, it’s later in the day than I like, so let’s get this thing done.

• Three comic-related updates in less than a week? The snarky academician may be back for good; I really enjoyed his take on recent (and likely future) events in Starslip.
• I am offically Chris Onstad’s bitch. I know there’a an RSS feed for Achewood, and I suppose it’s still Monday evening somewhere and my watch is just fast. I keep … updating … wanting to see what happens with the OnStar lady.
• Speaking of Achewood, it appears that the SPX Gorilla won’t be making a return appearance this year; Ignatz nominations are up and Achewood is not to be found in the nominees for Outstanding Online Comic. This is not necessarily a bad thing, it’s good to have the love spread around a bit, and the offerings presented all have a very small-press vibe to them:
  • Bodyworld by Dash Shaw
  • Danny Dutch by David King
  • Thingpart by Joey Alison Sayers
  • Tablet magazine comics by Vanessa Davis
  • Year of the Rat by Cat Garza

  We at Fleen have no dog in this fight (although seriously — no love for Kate Beaton?), lots of good work there; good luck to all the nominees. The Ignatz Awards (which are bricks) will be presented at SPX next month.

• Speaking of awards, if you’re a working cartoonist you can vote for the Harveys, to be awarded at the Baltimore Comic-Con. May I draw your attention to the categories of Best Biographical, Historical or Journalistic Presentation, Best On-Line Comics Work, Special Award For Humor In Comics, and Special Award For Excellence In Presentation? Why yes, I believe I may. Voting concludes on Friday, people.

Hey. Coupla things for you today — been crazy, so I’m sure there’s more going on in wider Webcomicstan than what’s listed here, but this is stuff I knew about from over the weekend and didn’t have to go digging for. And yes, that last sentence is particularly designed to drive prescriptive grammarians up the wall. Feel free to Tut, tut! me all you want.

• You read Sin Titulo by T-X‘s Cameron Stewart, right? Modern day, creepy-as-all-hell noir mystery comic, with the most disturbing tree in all of comics as a featured player and head injury as a recurring motif? No? Well, you check out Stewart’s art blog on a regular basis, on account of his warm–up and wind-down sketches put most finished art to shame?

  Seriously, you’re not? What the hell’s wrong with you?

  Well, if you’re going to be that way about it, I suppose there’s no point in telling you that Cameron Stewart, along with the rest of the T-X crowd, will be presenting a panel called Webcomics 101 at the 2009 Toronto Fan Expo, at 5:00pm, this Friday Aug 28th at room 713A.

  Keep in mind that Sin Titulo, and The Abominable Charles Christopher, and Kukuburi are the sort of creator-owned work that these very capable, artists do when not working for The Big Guys. If you’re in the TO this Friday, you owe it to yourself to hear what they have to say. And if you want to participate remotely, you can send questions with Twitter hashtag #asktx.

• Friday, news broke (although I first saw it Sunday at Johanna Draper Carlson‘s site) that WOWIO is no longer owned by Platinum. Instead, it’s apparently now owned by Brian Altounian, the President & CEO of … Platinum.

  I don’t make this up, folks, I just read what’s on the ‘prompter.

  In any event WOWIO was apparently spun off from Platinum to a new holding company on 1 July (I have a low and suspicious nature, and I note that 1 July would be the first day of a new financial quarter, and the entire interview does not mention at all the creators who are still waiting for monies owed them for Q2 2008.

  Oh, but WOWIO are launching a “new non-profit intiative” to build readership, so that’s all right. Those inclined towards snark might note that WOWIO appears to have been a non-profit initiative since its launch — shame on you for taking such a cheap shot.

  As usual, any creators that actually wish to talk about the status of their WOWIO (non-)payments may use the comments thread below or the contact page up there to the right. We’d love to hear from you.

Seriously, this is even bigger than the time during the Great Outdoor Fight when I finally realized that one of the hands reaching for the keys of The Jeeps had a black wristband and the only character that we’d seen with such an adornment was Ramses Luther Smuckles and thus it was Ray’s dad driving one of The Jeeps.

(Of couse, we later learned in the back-matter of the print version that champions from the late ’60s and early ’70s wear the black wristband in honor of their fallen brother champion, Earl Morriss; thus, it might not have been Ramses Luther, but at the very least it was one of his brethren attempting to run down Ray.)

Okay, so according to Cartilage Head’s guide to the Lash of Thanatos, those so afflicted do not go to the usual afterlife (with which aflictee Roast Beef is well familiar), but rather are queued for reincarnation, typically as an Unfortune Being.

As we all know, Beef is from Circumstances. There may be none who is less fortunate. If Beef does expire from the Lash, will he reincarnate as himself?

Worst part about getting your computer encrapulated? You can fix it all you want, and you’re never quite 100% confident that the repair is good. Let’s make this quick and I can start my weekend and officially Not Worry About Things until Monday.

• At the risk of making this page All Gordon, All The Time, please be advised that Gordon McAlpin has a new store for Multiplex, including that most ubiquitous of all webcomics merch, a shirt. Pretty clever one, too.
• For anyone out that that really wants to figure out how my brain works, and predict what I will find hilarious under any and all circumstances no matter how dire, I have three words for you: David Caruso joke. No, wait, five words: David Caruso joke with math! Don’t forget the mouseover text.
• Speaking of dire circumstances, “Prestwick” wrote:
  

  Hey mate,

  Just submitting my comic for your two pfennigs. Would love to see what you think of the comic and am awaiting diligently with a notepad for suggestions (this is a such a steep learning curve for me that it’d make Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzig Norgay weep with fear so feedback helps :) ).

  At a guess, “Prestwick” is the Anglo half of an Anglo-Argentinian webcomic team, Peter Vines. Initial reaction: Hard Graft is so far reading like the bastard child of Rambo and The Sandbaggers; on the one hand, you’ve got some real things-blow-up tendencies, on the other hand, it seems to be decently researched (geographically, politically, technologically) and things don’t blow up more than they would in real life.

  It’s still developing, but it bears watching to see which side of the dividing line it comes down on, but with luck we’ll see more of the intrigue tropes, and less of mow-down-waves-of-bad-guys. I will say this, though — the opening splash page looks and reads like it could have come out of Queen and Country, and that’s a hell of a good omen.

So if you read yesterday’s comments, Gordon McAlpin is unconvinced of my reading of the Amazon Super Duper Strip Cartooner Dealie™ (not its actual name). He and I have had an entirely pleasant back-and-forth today (and there’s no snark there — one of the things I like about my commenters is they’re typically civil and grown-up when there are disagreements) and nailed down both a) my offer of a bet; and b) McAlpin’s desire for more quantification.

We have agreed to the following:

1. If, within 3 years of the development period being done and print syndication starting (which could be up to 2 years after being declared winner), the contest winner has picked up at least 500 papers Gordon wins.
2. If, the contest winner walks away from the syndication contract, is dropped by the syndicate, or under any other circumstances goes independent as a webcomic using the same strip from the contest, and achieves any significant audience on-line, Gordon wins.
3. If the strip isn’t picked up for print syndication by somebody at the end of the development period (doesn’t have to be Universal), or fails to hit 500 papers in three years of print syndication, I win.
4. The winner may, at his discretion, take a picture of himself waving the money in a triumphant pose, to be posted on the front page of Fleen.
5. The stakes are one dollar American cash money.
6. Both parties will appear as identical elephants.

• Whoops, sorry, couldn’t help myself, what with Achewood rocking so hard these days and all. For those that need a quick catch-up on the current storyline (which I’m provisionally calling The Lash of Thanatos), may I recommend that you peruse the return to webcomics blogging by Eric Burns-White; this is a man who uses language as he loves it — in great quantities, and with meandering grace. We do not always see eye-to-eye on events within webcomicdom, he and I, but I am able to map his viewpoints to mine with acceptable accuracy, and am glad to see that he concurs that the latest happenings in and around Alberquist Hall are indeed Something Special.
• Everybody catch The Guigster on TV yesterday? If not, there’s video for you to enjoy of some basic cable people not getting it, and applying the wrong questions (or at least not listening to the answers) about webcomicdom. But man, does Brad look natural on camera, or what? I guess he’s now our official Telegenic Spokesguy.
• Speaking of the media, yesterday’s overlong posting means I didn’t get a chance to mention this before it happened, but a cluster of webcomickers (actually, that last link actually refers to the webmaster of a webcomicker, but you get the idea) found themselves on a podcast devoted to free and open-source software. If you missed it, replay should be available sometime day after tomorrow here-ish. Thanks to Help Desk creator (and podcast participant) Christopher Wright for the heads-up.